Telephone companies in the provisioning of telephone services must make connections between feeder cable pairs and distribution cable pairs in field locations in the telephone plant. Currently, this is accomplished manually. Whenever a customer orders telephone service and a cross-connect is required, a technician is dispatched to the cross-connect location to accomplish the task. However, manual cross-connects are labor intensive, because they require travel time to the cross-connect location, and are therefore quite expensive. In addition, they have to be completed on a per order basis in order for the telephone companies to provide service in a timely manner. Some have proposed placing a full switching matrix at each of the cross-connect locations to reduce the labor cost associated with provisioning service while increasing the speed at which services are provisioned. With a full switching matrix at the cross-connect location, a technician can accomplish the cross-connect from a remote location by accessing the cross-connect switch matrix and activating the appropriate switch connection. However, a full switching matrix at each of the cross-connect locations is a large capital expense. In addition, once the cross-connects are established they remain in place unchanged for considerable periods of time, therefore a full switching matrix, which is designed to accommodate many repetitive connections, provides a capability far in excess of the true need.
Therefore, it is an object of my invention to automate the cross-connect function without having to provide a full function switching matrix at each cross-connect location in the telephone company's outside plant facilities.